Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird spoke at the 2024 Iowa GOP state convention in Clive May 4, 2024. (Photo by Robin Opsahl/Iowa Capital Dispatch)
The Republican attorney general in Iowa is among officials in 26 states who signed onto a legal brief asking the U.S. Supreme Court to intervene in a dispute about Virginia’s attempt to remove 1,600 people from voter registration rolls without proving each of those individuals was a noncitizen and ineligible to cast a ballot.
The U.S. Department of Justice and a coalition of plaintiffs filed suit to halt Virginia Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin from using an executive order to purge the state’s registration list of people suspected of not being U.S. citizens. The Youngkin administration relied on motor vehicle data to identify the targets, but plaintiffs offered evidence some of people dropped from Virginia’s voter registration list were citizens.
The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a lower court judge’s order restoring the 1,600 registrations because Youngkin must deal with suspected noncitizens on the state’s voter rolls through an individualized removal process rather than relying on systematic downloads of motor vehicle data.
Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird signed the brief supporting Virginia Republican Attorney General Jason Miyares’ request for immediate intervention by the U.S. Supreme Court. About two-dozen GOP attorneys general signed the amicus brief.
“Federal and state law are clear: only citizens can vote,” Bird stated in a news release. “But rather than following the law and partnering with the States to promote election integrity, the Biden-Harris DOJ has been a roadblock. We must ensure election integrity.”
Iowa Secretary of State Paul Pate, a Republican, announced Oct. 22 that an audit of Iowa’s voter rolls found 87 people who voted in an election and later identified themselves as non-citizens to the Department of Transportation. Another 67 people identified as noncitizens had registered to vote but had not cast ballots, Pate said.
Iowa Secretary of State says 87 noncitizens voted in elections
In the Virginia case, the brief from the GOP attorneys general said federal court decisions temporarily halting removal of alleged noncitizens from the voter roll in advance of the Nov. 5 election undermined Virginia’s authority to determine issues of voter qualification. The brief claimed there might be less political division in the United States if the federal government avoided “last-minute attacks on state efforts to police voter qualifications.”
Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach, who has waded into numerous legal disputes tied to immigration issues, led the brief.
“It has always been against the law for noncitizens to vote,” Kobach said. “Every vote cast by a noncitizen effectively cancels out the vote of a U.S. citizen. It is unconscionable that Democrats and activist judges are fighting to keep them on the rolls.”
State attorneys general joining Iowa and Kansas on the brief included Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, West Virginia, and Wyoming.
David Becker, founder and executive director of the Center for Election Innovation & Research, said claims about widespread noncitizen voting were false.
“When states look for noncitizens on their rolls, they find it’s almost nonexistent,” Becker said. “States already have the tools they need to find and prevent these very rare cases.”
He said Ohio officials reported analysis of the state’s 8 million registered voters identified six alleged instances of noncitizens casting a ballot during the past 10 years. That would be a potential fraud rate of .00002% or something equivalent to the probability of being struck by lightning in Ohio, Becker said.
“If both parties would work together after this election to find ways to make it easier for citizens to register while ensuring that even the very rare case of noncitizens registering doesn’t happen anymore, that would be a good thing,” Becker said. “But these false claims about widespread noncitizen voting shouldn’t be used to justify dramatic new measures that would have no meaningful impact on election integrity.”